Jen Niederst will be giving a talk (this link is a page that was framed, here's the wrapper) on November 13th in Boston entitled "Web Trends 1993-2001: A Designer's Perspective." If you live in the Boston area, have $35 to spare, and are interested in the web, you should attend. Jen's a smart cookie and has written several books so really, you should go.

I'm off to Washington DC tomorrow at the crack of dawn (actually earlier) for O'Reilly's Peer-to-Peer and Web Services Conference where I'll be giving a presentation ("Weblogs as Peer-to-Peer Journalism") and speaking on a panel ("Collaborative Writing"). I'm looking forward to it, though I'm a bit nervous about the presentation part. Hopefully it will all go smoothly and hopefully my wireless net card will work. If those two things happen, I'll be a happy camper. Assuming I don't get all 'thraxed up in DC.

Can you believe those fucking Yankees? ARGH! At a Halloween party the other night I was talking with some folks about our objection to the label, "America's Team" being applied to the Yankees. If anything, it should be applied to the Diamondbacks because what's more American than making something of yourself out of nothing? In three years the Diamondbacks have gone from being a brand new expansion team to making it to the World Series. Now that's America for you.

After trying to grow my hair out for approximately ten months, I threw in the towel this morning and got it cut short again. I guess you could say I'm a quitter. Or maybe you could say I'm not-quitter, and that I quit on my short hair and have now not-quit by returning to it. Yes, you could say that.

Anyway it's back to short, but not blonde, and not so short as it was when it was all spikey. See for yourself with these silly animated before and after pictures below. You can also see how different (and better) it looks when I don't slouch. (I tend to slouch a lot, but I'm working on not doing it anymore.)

Before and after animated, fast (69k)
Before and after animated, slow (69k)
Before and after animated, tweened (171k)

Wow. 82% of the people who answered the poll below have been reading megnut for more than six months, and 57% have been reading for more than a year. I had no idea! That's very cool, though it does mean that I'm not attracting many new readers. Perhaps some sort of new readership campaign is in order? I'll call it "Read megnut 2002" First I'll define the market segments I hope to attract, then I'll devise an exciting ad campaign to drive them here. And then, um, then I'll just do what I always do: write about random things that occur to me as I waste a lot of time online.

If you were the type of child that liked doing make-overs (do the words Barbie Glamour Head ring any bells?) and if you didn't grow up to be a make-up artist, you may get a kick out of this Online Makeover Doohickey (I'm at a loss for what to call it, my vocabulary fails me today). You can apply all sorts of eyeshadow colors and lipsticks. By doing so, I was reminded once again of my lack of talent in regards to all things make-up.

The other night I was thinking about running a poll asking whether I should cut my hair, and I was remembering when I ran a poll asking what color I should dye my hair. It occurred to me that many current readers may not have been megnut readers when I did that. And that got me curious, so I'm wondering now:

How long have you been reading megnut?
less than 2 months
three to six months
between six months and a year
more than a year
more than two years

You can view current results here. And thanks for your participation. I'm not sure what I'll do with the feedback, but I appreciate your taking the time to respond.

Happy November! Did you have a safe and fun Halloween? I did, and my cookies turned out well but alas the photos of them did not. You'll just have to use your imagination.

Happy Halloween! I've just baked some mini-pumpkin cookies to take to a party this evening. Once they've cooled I'm going to frost them, hopefully with more skill than the last batch of sugar cookies I made (penguins that were tasty but ugly as sin.)

I've been thinking about Halloween costumes today, trying to recall my favorite from childhood, but nothing special comes to mind except the sushi costumes some friends and I wore to a party two years ago. We were supposed to be different types of maki (except our friend Kip who was tamago, he wore a white t-shirt, spray painted a giant piece of foam yellow, placed it on his back and cinched a black trashbag around his waist to imitate the seaweed, it was something!), but it didn't quite work as I'd planned. Still, I think it's my favorite costume, and certainly my favorite costume attempt. Perhaps next year I'll try it again. This year I'm recycling a different old costume: my spider hat that I made in 1997. I'll try to post a picture this afternoon.

Oops, not sure how so much time passed between updates, guess I've been busy with other things, like going to Berkeley for my "Journalism's New Life Forms" panel on Saturday. Rusty's got a great write-up over at Kuro5hin which you should check out. The panel was fun and interesting, but too short. Only an hour! Rusty and I could have talked for three hours at least about that stuff, but it was better than nothing.

I've got a lot of thoughts about how panels should work, now that I've participated in quite a few, and I was pleased that this one went off fairly well. I'll try to summarize in the next day or so.

Meanwhile, on the peer-to-peer/amateur journalism vibe: Matt Haughey's observed an increase in traffic accidents at the intersection near his house. This is the start of an interesting, and potentially important, local news story. With a little research, this could turn into a "real" article. Now either Matt could take it to the next level by making some phone calls and digging up some stats about accidents at the Masonic/Fell intersection, or a local reporter (who reads weblogs to keep up on what's happening, to get a sense of what's afoot in his/her community) could pick this up. A phone call to Matt, a few more well-placed calls, and this could (and should) be in the Chronicle. Why has the City apparently abandoned the street light upgrade? Has there really been an increase in accidents? Is the traffic signal less visible than it used to be? Is the City at fault? Are they potentially liable? If you take a look at the pictures Matt posted, you'll see this is a pretty serious issue. One car ended up on its side after the most recent crash.

This is a great example of how peer-to-peer journalism can work. Matt's observed something and he's alerting people to it, and alerting a wider audience than he would if he just made a phone call to City Hall. With more people having knowledge of the issue, the problem is more likely to be addressed. It's a lot harder for someone to sweep this under the rug. (I just love the political implications of P2PJ, don't you?) It's also a great example of how traditional journalists can use weblogs for research and story ideas. I think I'm going to use this as an example during my talk next week in DC (at the O'Reilly conference).